Hey guys! So, this thread is for people who are interested in making edits with programs and need a place to start. I debated on which program to use for this thread, but decided to go for paint.net since it's freeware and I have seen some users mention it frequently as of recent. I'd rather just make a thread here where people can chime in than make many journals about it.

I use three programs for my art class and for editing stuff. Paint Tool Sai (which won't be covered... much. It's purely a drawing and painting program, but it can do occasional brush jobs on larger edits), Photoshop CS6 (my favorite but I can tell you now, without a graphics tablet this program is steep), and paint.net. I mostly use that these days for my icons and sigs since I'm using PS to do art with more and more. Paint.NET may lack many things PS does, but it is still pretty powerful. I made my favorite icons atm with it as seen here.

So... While I may still be learning how to edit things myself, I'll do my best to introduce people to these programs and answer questions. Anyone else can chime in too! We can all learn together.
If you want to experience the best of PS and Paint.net, I recommend looking for some useful plug-ins. I'll teach you guys about plug ins another time.

Here are some useful links.[ LINK ]
Official place to purchase PS. Sometimes they release their first versions for free and Adobe Cloud has a decent deal on the newer ones from time to time.

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Official site to get Paint.NET. PDN is completely free, but be careful installing and downloading. A few people complained that they looked elsewhere for the program and gotten some nasty results. Mine is from the legit company so I never had these issues.

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Yes, yes. Good old DA. They have a lot of custom brushes and textures made by really awesome artists there. I'll teach you guys about those when I cover plug-ins.

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One of the biggest icon texture and brush livejournal communities. LJ is not as active as a site, but most of the links there are still running that I have run into.

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Let's you install any font into your computer system. You can import some fancy font.

Photo editing sites:[ LINK ]
I actually use Ribbet after resizing my images to sharpen it because I like that they keep their clarity and sharpen tool separated unlike these programs. You can avoid an ugly contrast effect by using their sharpen tool.

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I actually use this to resize my images always since PS and PDN use Fant and Bubionic resampling which I'll teach you about eventually. Remember to always sharpen after resizing even if it is a notch or two. This site combined with ribbet make pretty results.

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Lunapic! they also have a nice resampler and support animation unlike the other sites. So that's a plus.

I'll be adding some really neat stuff in here soon, from full fledge icon and rendering tutorials to simple things like adding flower crowns on your characters' heads. :D

As always, please be careful installing any program on to your computer!